Europäische Regulierung institutioneller Stimmrechtsberater

There is a fear of the enormous power of the major proxy advisors going around. Different regulations have been worked out. Only a few have been implemented. The EU Commission proposes amendments of the Shareholders’ Rights Directive and supposes – obviously without having deeply examined – to have a regulatory competence regarding the proxy advisors. However, only little attention has yet been paid to the questions, which regulatory competences of the EU exist vis-à-vis the mostly US based proxy advisors, which regulatory strategies could be enforced and whether a regulation on level of the single member states would be more efficient. These problems are discussed in the main part of this dissertation.
Additionally, against the background of a welfare economics approach, it is shown, which content a regulation regarding the proxy advisors should be of to canalize the proxy advisors’ potential economic benefit and to simultaneously minimize their economic costs.